[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 30 (Thursday, February 15, 2018)]
[House]
[Pages H1207-H1210]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
SUCCEEDING ON BEHALF OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of
January 3, 2017, the Chair recognizes the gentleman from Georgia (Mr.
Woodall) for 30 minutes.
Mr. WOODALL. Madam Speaker, I very much appreciate that, and I
appreciate you being here with us on a Thursday afternoon.
I know that you came to Congress with the same optimism that I came
to Congress with, and that is, if only we work hard enough together, if
only we commit ourselves with earnestness to one another, we will be
able to make a difference for folks. I still believe that, and I hope
you still believe that, too, after your time here.
I still believe that, if only we work hard enough, we are going to be
able to serve the American people as we promised we would. But
occasionally--occasionally--I don't want to vilify the entire fourth
estate today, Madam Speaker. There is not enough time to go through
that today. But occasionally, the fourth estate seems to suggest that
we are failing the American people when, in fact, we are succeeding on
their behalf, and that is what I want to talk about this afternoon.
We just came through a difficult budget time, Madam Speaker. We came
through that not because of any failures of any man or woman in this
institution. I want to make that clear. This House came together as a
body back in July of last year and passed every single national
security appropriations bill that was upon us.
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July of last year--3 months before the end of the fiscal year--this
body came together and did its job to fund our men and women in
uniform, fund border security, and fund those incredibly important
national security items that every single American family cares about.
The Senate had been unable to get any of those bills passed. That
brought us to just a week ago, when the President finally signed into
law a funding bill for the United States Government to cover the
remainder of fiscal year 2018.
I mentioned the House passed, in July of last year, all of the
national security appropriations bills. In September of last year,
Madam Speaker, the House passed all the rest of the appropriations
bills. So the entire Federal Government, from the perspective of the
435 men and women who serve in the House, that work was completed on
time before the end of the fiscal year.
But, again, the Senate was unable to take up any appropriations
bills, for a variety of different reasons--and I am not interested in
assigning that blame today. I am interested in figuring out what we can
do about it going forward--took until just a week ago for the Senate to
sign an appropriations bill, craft a plan, and do what we call raising
the caps so that we can get a funding agreement that will take us over
the next 18 months.
Madam Speaker, you can't see it here, but I have a chart of defense
spending going back over the last few years. In fact, I started the
chart the year that I was running for Congress for the very first time.
It was 2010. I came in in that big class of freshmen. There were 100 of
us. Imagine that: 100
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out of 435 Members, coming in for the first time, together, in January
of 2011, and many of us came here with a desire to balance budgets.
Among the many data points that get shared, Madam Speaker, one was
shared with me when I was doing C-SPAN's Washington Journal this week.
The host said: Rob, do you think the era of fiscal conservatism is
over?
I thought that was odd. I am thinking: No, I serve in a body full of
men and women, both sides of the aisle, fiscal conservatives, who want
to make sure the American taxpayer is getting a dollar's worth of value
for a dollar's worth of taxes, who want to make sure we are not
balancing the budget on the backs of our children and grandchildren,
and who want to make sure we are not mortgaging the future of our
children and our grandchildren.
Why would the era of fiscal conservatism be over? Well, the
suggestion was made it is because we just signed a budget deal, and
that budget deal raises levels of discretionary spending in this
country; and if we are raising levels of discretionary spending,
mustn't that mean that our commitment to fiscal responsibility is over?
That led me to come to the floor today, Madam Speaker, because what
you can't see on this chart, but I have displayed here, are two lines.
One is a red line. Oftentimes, Madam Speaker, folks bring charts to the
floor that only show you a part of the picture, so the amplitude is
exaggerated. It looks like things are worse or better than they
actually are.
I have grounded my chart at zero. This is zero dollars in spending,
going all the way up to $1 trillion in spending. The year I got here,
we were spending about $689 billion a year on defense.
Well, we got together as a body, Madam Speaker. And, I will remind
you, Republicans controlled the U.S. House at that time. President
Obama controlled the White House, Harry Reid controlled the United
States Senate, and the House was in minority hands, being led by
Republicans. But we got together, Republicans and Democrats--House,
Senate, White House--and we crafted a budget plan forward that reduced
spending.
Now, the plan was that we were going to reduce spending on both the
defense side of the ledger and the nondefense side of the ledger, and
then we were going to come together and deal with those major
healthcare entitlement programs that are driving the debt far out into
the future, deal with the trust funds for Medicare and Social Security
that are underfunded today that cannot sustain the promises that have
been made to generations today, that we would repair those programs and
make them solvent long into the future.
It was a worthwhile goal. It was a goal worthy of this body, men and
women--Republicans, Democrats, House Members, Senate Members--who came
together. But what you can see on this chart, Madam Speaker, is the
black line indicates the path we took of funding national security,
each year, spending less and less and less.
Now, mind you, nobody thought this was the right plan for how to fund
national security. This was designed to be a driver to force folks to
come together and deal with those larger entitlement programs that
actually are the drivers of the debt. It didn't work.
In fact, we had an entire Presidential election cycle that just went
on 15 months ago, Madam Speaker, where you can't name the candidate who
ran on either the Republican or the Democratic side of the aisle, who
made debt and deficits their priority.
Who was that? Who was that leader running for the White House, the
last time around, who focused on debt and deficits as their priorities?
For whatever reason, it slipped from the national stage, probably
because we had been successfully curbing the needle on spending.
So, fast forward, to just a week ago, Madam Speaker, where we raised
defense spending by $100 billion a year. Now, if you calculate where
the caps were going to go and how the sequester was going to happen,
you actually turn out to have about a $150 billion increase over where
folks expected us to be.
Well, golly, Madam Speaker, even in Washington, D.C., when you raise
a $550 billion budget to $700 billion, that is an enormous increase.
That is why I was asked: Is the era of fiscal conservatism over?
I direct you to this chart, I show you this enormous increase in
defense spending, and I show you that we are still $100 billion a year
lower than Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid had anticipated
before I was elected to Congress in 2010.
All of this area, between the red line and the black line, Madam
Speaker, are dollars saved for the American people. Now, those dollars
came at a price.
I reference testimony that Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, former
General Jim Mattis, gave in the Armed Services Committee--this was just
a week and 2 days ago--and he said this: ``I cannot overstate the
impact to our troops' morale from all this uncertainty.''
He is talking about these continuing resolutions that get passed.
Again, the House passed its bills back last July, the Senate hasn't
been able to pass any of its bills, so we were funding the government
one short-term bill at the time, creating havoc on the American
military.
``I cannot overstate the impact to our troops' morale from all this
uncertainty. The combination of rapidly changing technology, the
negative impact on military readiness resulting from the longest
continuous stretch of combat in our Nation's history, and insufficient
funding have created an overstretched and underresourced military.''
I don't believe there is a man or woman in this Chamber, Madam
Speaker, who would disagree with that, ``an overstretched and
underresourced military,'' or ``the longest continuous stretch of
combat in our Nation's history.'' This is not an issue that divides
this Chamber, this is an issue that unites this Chamber, Madam Speaker.
I am proud that we came together, as a House and a Senate, as
Republicans and Democrats, to address that failure.
In fact, I will quote from General Mattis. Just two days after that
morale quote, after this body had acted, after the Senate had finally
acted, after the President had put his signature on the bill, General
Mattis said this: ``I am very confident that what the Congress has now
done and the President is going to allocate to us in the budget is what
we need to bring us back to a position of primacy.''
``What the Congress has done and what the President will allocate
will bring us back to a position of primacy,'' I mention that again,
Madam Speaker, because, among the many conversations we have here about
military readiness, General Mattis has expressed confidence that, in a
time of war, the Congress would fund the military.
In fact, in that same testimony that I quoted from earlier before the
Armed Services Committee, he said: ``I know that in time of a major
war, Congress will provide our military with what it needs. But money
at the time of crisis fails to deter war. . . .''
I know the Congress will provide what we need in a time of crisis,
but money at a time of crisis fails to deter that crisis. We could have
avoided that conflict had only we been properly funded.
We came together with White House leadership. The President said: I
need $700 billion for 2018; I need $716 billion for 2019. That is what
General Mattis said as well. That is what we are hearing from the
entire administration. That is what we came together and gave.
But the era of fiscal conservatism, Madam Speaker, is not over. The
era of shortchanging our military, in the hopes that we might come
together on a bigger deal, the gridlock that was created by that, that
gridlock is over. That uncertainty that General Mattis bemoaned, that
is over. But fiscal conservatism continues.
It is not just on the defense side. It is easy to talk about the
defense side because I know that is something that unites everyone in
the Chamber, Madam Speaker. But let's look at the nondefense side.
Nondefense, as you know, Madam Speaker, is, well, everything else
that the Federal Government does--it is not an income support program--
from parks to roads to courts, from prisons to education, from
investments in NIH and the CDC, from our involvement overseas in hunger
programs and refugee programs. Absolutely everything
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else the Federal Government does is in the nondefense discretionary
side.
I point you to two lines, once again, Madam Speaker. The red line is
what President Obama, Speaker Pelosi, and Majority Leader Harry Reid
anticipated spending before I arrived. The black line is what we have
actually spent since I arrived.
Among the many changes made in the law, when the President signed the
caps deals into effect last week, is that we raised nondefense
discretionary spending, too. In fact, over the 2-year deal that the
President signed, we are talking about an additional $300 billion--
billion with a B--in additional spending.
Well, by golly, Madam Speaker, if you care about budgets, if you care
about deficits, isn't $300 billion a frighteningly large figure to
increase spending in a time of already existing deficits? Of course, it
is. Of course, it is.
But let me say, once again, that does not mean the era of fiscal
conservatism is over. We had a choice. We could continue to keep the
military in that space of uncertainty that General Mattis cited as
being so dangerous, or we could cut the deal that we had to cut to
break that cycle of uncertainty.
I don't know what kind of negotiating experience you have had, Madam
Speaker, but it turns out that when you walk into a negotiation and
say, ``I have got to have what I have got to have, and I will give you
whatever you need in order to get it,'' you are not in a particularly
strong negotiating spot.
That is the position the President found himself in. He was 100
percent committed to our troops, he was 100 percent committed to
national security, he was 100 percent committed to that pay raise that
we had promised our troops, but we had not funded, and he said: I am
going to do whatever it takes to get $700 billion in 2018 and $716
billion in 2019, to make sure national security is protected and our
troops are served.
Well, what that led to was an increase in nondefense discretionary
spending as well, Madam Speaker. But still look at these lines. That
delta between the top line of where we were going to go and the black
line of where we have actually gone is trillions of dollars'--trillions
with a T--worth of savings.
Between the defense spending, Madam Speaker, which changed
dramatically after that big freshman class in 2011 arrived, and
nondefense spending, which changed dramatically after that big class in
2011 arrived, trillions of dollars in debt has not occurred. Trillions
of dollars in spending of American taxpayer dollars has not occurred.
We have squeezed those budgets: the security budget and the
nonsecurity budget, the defense budget and the nondefense budget. We
have squeezed each of those budgets to make sure that we are getting a
dollar's worth of value for the American taxpayer out of every dollar
that we spend.
The net result of that, Madam Speaker--that and a collection of
economic outcomes that have been desirable--has led to a decrease in
net interest spending: money that was not borrowed, interest that does
not have to be paid--money that was not borrowed. Thus it didn't drive
interest rates up. Those interest rates are lower on all the other
money that has already been borrowed, not just trillions of dollars in
savings on spending that was foregone, Madam Speaker, but trillions of
dollars in savings of interest that was not paid.
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Why do I take the time to come down to the floor to tell that story,
Mr. Speaker?
It is because I grow weary, as I know all of my colleagues do, of
reading the defeatist headlines that show up on the paper day after day
after day: Congress failing; gridlock prevailing; bipartisanship dead;
cooperation extinct.
It is not true.
What we have done together is worth bragging about back home. What we
have done together is worth celebrating when we are together. What we
have done together is worth using as a model for thinking about what we
can do together again tomorrow.
It doesn't matter whether you sit on the furthest right in this
Chamber or the furthest left in this Chamber, Mr. Speaker. That dollar
worth of taxes raised from that American citizen is a valuable thing.
It is a trust. There is a stewardship obligation to each and every one
of those dollars.
What do you want to use it for?
Maybe you want to give it back to those American citizens. I am
particularly pleased with the tax bill we passed that did exactly that.
Again, passed it in the House, passed it in the Senate, moved it to the
White House; done in a bicameral way.
I think the American citizen can generally spend their dollar better
than we can spend it on their behalf. I know they trust themselves to
spend their dollar more than they trust us to spend it on their behalf.
We could take that dollar, we could put it back in an American
citizen's pocket. Leave it with them to begin with and never even take
it. That is what we did with the tax cuts.
We could invest that dollar in national security. We could look to
see what is that additional training an airman might need; what is that
additional equipment that a marine might need; what is that additional
item that we could research, purchase, improve, repair, that would make
a difference in the life of a man or a woman who is serving this
country.
We could spend that dollar on national security. We could spend that
dollar on nondefense needs; research in Alzheimer's; research at our
major universities; research into that next generational transportation
outcome that is going to change the way that we deal with congestion in
America.
There are 1,000 different ways to spend each and every one of those
dollars. It does not matter where you believe that dollar ought to go.
It is a worthwhile purchase to make sure we are using that dollar,
either with the American citizen in their pocket, with the DOD in the
pursuit of national security, or with one of our great research
institutions in pursuit of the next healthcare discovery, rather than
paying it in interest to someone around the globe who lent us money in
our time of need.
We need to restrain those dollars today, Mr. Speaker, so that when we
have a time of need in the future, we will be able to access them. The
era of fiscal responsibility is not behind us; it is upon us.
We have an opportunity each and every day together to squeeze those
dollars until they scream; squeeze the value out of every nickel that
comes through this institution. We have done it together, Mr. Speaker.
This isn't an aspirational goal. This is a certain fact, that we have
done it together year after year after year after year. This isn't
something that maybe one day, if only we work hard enough, we can do.
This is something we have achieved year after year after year after
year.
Let's not stop. Let's not stop. And let's not let folks tell us that
we can't get it done together. Let's not give in to that devil on the
left shoulder that says we should go down and run each other out and
talk about why the institution fails.
Let's give in to that angel on the right shoulder that talks about
how, if we put our minds together, if we commit ourselves to one
another, there is genuinely no limit to what we can do together.
I am not just talking about what we can do together as the body here
in the United States House, Mr. Speaker. And I am not just talking
about what we can do together as a House and a Senate and a White
House. I am talking about what we can do together as the American
people.
The strength of this institution has never been the 435 Members who
are in it. It has been the 300 million Americans who have sent us here.
The strength of this institution has never come from the Members. It
has come from the Nation that lends us its power.
I genuinely believe there is no limit to what we can do together. I
am genuinely disappointed in those days that we give in to that devil
on the left shoulder that tells us that running each other out, running
each other down, denigrating the institution, denigrating the Nation,
denigrating one another is the pathway to success.
But we have had enough victories together. We have come through
enough challenges together. When they said we
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would fail, we have succeeded together enough that I have great
optimism not just about the next 10 months in this Chamber, but about
the next decade, the next generation, the next hundred years for this
country.
We don't know when the economy is going to fail us, Mr. Speaker. We
have to plan for that rainy day. We have been doing that. We have been
doing it with spending at every single level in the government, and it
has made the biggest difference in debt and deficits that I have seen
in my lifetime.
Let's build on that success. Let's recommit ourselves to that goal.
Let's surprise the naysayers about the things that we do together.
Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
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